Posted onSeptember 7, 2022|Comments Off on Feeling Very Lucky In This Heat Wave (or I’m Totally Spoiled Now)
I’ve gotten used to being pretty miserable during the summer at my old place with my window a/c doing what it could, but still living in a very hot house. I have had to figure out ways to stay cool when it’s unbearable inside. I have sat on ice packs while working, gotten extra sheets so I could keep a top sheet damp on top of me to try to cool down, and taken multiple cool showers to try to feel better. It was a lot better with my window a/c than it was before I had it, but that’s comparing being over 100 degrees inside my house to it being 85 degrees inside my house.
For most of this summer, LA has had a relatively mild summer. I haven’t been miserable while I have been home. I’m not overheating while working or sweating and feeling sick while I’m trying to sleep. I’m still getting used to having central a/c and making sure that my electric bill doesn’t get too expensive, but I think I probably use it less than many people would since I’m used to things being so warm inside. Plus, I’m much better insulated in my place now than I was at my old place. I don’t have the same issues with direct sunlight that I used to, and I don’t have all the walls exposed to heat. So while the summer was mild, I also thought it might be because of being in a much better home than I was in before.
But right now, LA is in a heat wave. It’s really hot and shockingly muggy here. When I’ve been leaving my place it’s almost a shock how different it feels. I’ve been so comfortable in my house and don’t always check the temperature before leaving. I haven’t had to leave too much lately to do things and I’ve been trying to rest at home as much as I can, so I am glad that my time in the heat is limited. And as soon as I get home, it’s seriously so nice and cool and I feel instantly more relaxed. I don’t leave my a/c on while I’m gone, but I can set things from my phone so when I’m heading home from a workout or running an errand, I can start cooling off my place before I arrive so it’s not as warm when I walk in the door.
I know how lucky I am to have a/c and to live somewhere that is comfortable. I haven’t had this luxury before. I had a/c at the last two places I lived, but neither of those places had efficient a/c units. At the place I lived before the house I was in for 12 years, we had a unit in the wall that only faced the kitchen and had no way of cooling down any other space. And it wasn’t that long ago that I was living at my old place so I very clearly remember how bad it was, especially in a heat wave. So I have put it out to my friends that if they need a place to cool down, they are welcome to come over here. Nobody has taken me up on that offer so far, but it’s an open invitation to my friends. I didn’t have many places I could go and cool down in heat waves before, and I don’t want anyone to feel as miserable as I used to during the summer.
I remember when my parents and I were looking at condos and one of the non-negotiable things for my parents was that my new place needed central a/c. I said that wasn’t a must-have for me and I would be ok with a window unit. But now that I’m living in my first place with central a/c, I’m feeling very spoiled and know that I won’t be able to go back. And I’m grateful that it was something my parents required for a new place because they were right that it is very worth it!
Posted onJune 18, 2021|Comments Off on More Heatwave Annoyances (or I Hate That This Seems To Always Surprise Me)
I have written multiple posts about being annoyed with the heat. It used to be much worse in my house when I didn’t have my window a/c unit. Back then, I was getting very sick from the heat and I didn’t have a great way to escape it other than to be in my car. With my a/c, it’s not perfect in my house, but it’s significantly better. And considering how many hours a day I am in my house at my computer, I’m so grateful that I can make it tolerable in my house. But since it is still warm, I do still deal with the side effect of the heat.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to me. I’ve been experiencing this for as long as I can remember. But it always does shock me when it’s hot out and my body is having weird reactions. And right now, we are in a big heatwave and my body reacted immediately.
I’m so much more irritated right now than I normally am. The heat makes it hard for me to sleep and I know that I’m also less hydrated than normal (but I’m not really dehydrated since I drink so much water every day). I also just feel uncomfortable in general between the air feeling heavy and feeling a bit gross because I get sweaty. And the worst side effect from the heat is having my body swell up. I know others have it worse than I do and I’m lucky that most of my swelling isn’t extreme. But it’s so frustrating and annoying when the swelling makes it so my clothes either don’t fit or don’t fit the way I am used to.
I think the swelling also probably adds to my irritation, but overall the swelling is the reaction or side effect I hate the most. I hate the feeling like I’ve gained weight overnight without knowing when it might be better (unlike PMS swelling which is somewhat predictable). It really messes with my mind and puts me in a really negative headspace with recovery efforts. I feel like I’ve screwed up somehow and that all the efforts I’ve made so far are worthless. I know in reality that isn’t true, but it’s hard to convince myself of that sometimes.
I don’t think there is much I can do about the swelling. Even if I had a better a/c unit, I think whenever I would leave my house I would experience it. I am looking at maybe getting a little fan or a mini a/c unit to put on my desk because that might help to make me a little more comfortable while I’m working. I also have cooling towels that I could put on me while I work if I need to. But I don’t think it will do much more than provide comfort. For the other issues, I just have to wait until it cools down a bit.
And I know it will cool down eventually and hopefully things will be a bit easier on me for a bit before the next heatwave. And I’m sure there will be at least one more big heatwave this summer since summer has only begun. Hopefully, at the next heatwave, I won’t be as surprised when this all happens to me or I have a better way to manage it and react.
Posted onAugust 25, 2020|Comments Off on Dealing With Heat And Humidity (or I’m Very Lucky The Pandemic Didn’t Happen A Few Years Ago)
Every summer, LA has at least 1 heatwave. Lately, it’s been a heatwave that also is muggy weather. We don’t have humidity like a lot of the country does, but it gets a lot muggier than normal (for example, the past week or so has been 70% humidity). It’s not comfortable weather to be outside in. Fortunately, right now I’m not doing a lot outside. I’m staying home as much as I can and only leaving on a rare occasion. Most of those times going out of my house is to run an errand (like this week I need to get a prescription at the hospital that can’t be mailed). I’ve only had a few funoutings in the past 5 or so months.
I am glad I’m not outside working or doing anything too crazy. I know this weather makes me pretty miserable. My body hates it a lot too. I’m going back and forth on if I’m happy that I’m pretty much stuck at home and going out isn’t really an option. I do wish that I could go out to do some things because in a normal heatwave I usually go to a few places that have a/c. Like going to the studio to do my workouts. I miss that so much, and I miss it more and more as time passes. They have a/c during the workouts so going out to do that is always easy. Same with going out to dinner at a restaurant. Even sitting outside is sometimes not as hot as the normal weather because you have some of the a/c from inside coming out to a patio.
I’m lucky while dealing with this weather. For a long time, I didn’t have a/c in my house. I only got it a few years ago. And that was a game-changer for me. My house likes to hold in heat, and even when it was cool (and not muggy) outside in the summer, my house didn’t like to cool down. There were so many nights I went to bed and inside my house, it was 90 degrees. And working from home during the summer was miserable. I had a lot of fans going, I would be sitting on ice packs, and I still would feel sick from how hot it was. There were days where I know it was over 100 degrees inside, and one time I remember it was about 110 while I was working inside my house.
My a/c doesn’t work as well as central air would or if I had a/c in more rooms. It does make a huge difference but there are still several nights I go to bed and my bedroom is 85 degrees. But I know it would be so much worse without it. And even when it’s not super hot, with the mugginess the a/c does an amazing job with make things more comfortable inside. I know I could get a dehumidifier, but I also don’t need to get a new thing in my house. 75 degrees with 70 humidity feels a lot worse than 77 degrees with significantly less humidity. So I will run my a/c to get the mugginess out of the house.
Even though I normally am home a lot, I have never run my a/c quite this much. I am a little worried about how my electricity bill will look next time, but I also know that I’m not doing this for silly reasons. I do try to turn it off when I can. I have started to sleep with the a/c on (which is something I used to never do) because I was waking up and it would be almost 90 degrees in my house. My house just has the weirdest insulation that makes it retain heat like no other place I have lived.
But I am grateful for the little a/c unit. I can’t imagine being stuck at home without a/c. I don’t know how my neighbors do it. Maybe they aren’t as sensitive to the heat as I am. But I feel like if I’m going to be stuck at home, I at least want to be comfortable. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.
I hope that we aren’t still struggling to overcome this pandemic as much when it’s winter, but I do know I can deal with the cold a lot more than I can deal with the heat. But I hope that when the weather cools down and it’s nicer to be outside that I can be outside a bit more and do some things outside of the walls of my home.
Posted onJuly 12, 2018|Comments Off on I Wasn’t Expecting To Write About The Heat Again (or Lazy Days)
I just wrote about the heat and how it had been affecting me lately. Fortunately since I wrote that post, it has been a bit better. It’s still very hot, but it’s much more tolerable. My little a/c unit can finally get my house below 80 degrees at night and I’m not feeling as heat sick.
But just because it’s better now doesn’t mean that this entire week has been affected by how it was earlier. I wrote about how I hadn’t been sleeping that well. I’m not the best sleeper, but I can usually get 6 hours of sleep when I’m in bed for 7-8 hours (I do toss and turn a lot). With this heat, I had been averaging about half of that. Over the weekend (when I wrote the earlier post), it hadn’t really affected me too much. I was tired, but I was still able to get things done during the day.
But by Monday, this lack of sleep really caught up with me. I was supposed to attend a union event on Monday evening that I had been looking forward to for about a week. It was about the commercial contracts and I knew that there was going to be a lot of information shared that I wanted to know about. And I knew that a bunch of my friends would be there and I love having a chance to catch up with friends at different events.
I didn’t have work on Monday but I did have some things I needed to do that morning and afternoon. I got those things done and went home to decompress a bit before getting dressed and leaving my house to go to the meeting. The next thing I knew, it was a few hours later. I ended up taking a nap but it felt more like passing out for several hours because I don’t even remember laying down on my couch.
I figured that after that on Monday, maybe I’d be doing better. I slept better Monday night to Tuesday morning but within an hour of starting work I was feeling ready to go back to sleep. I couldn’t ever remember being that tired before and I felt awful that I might not be pulling my weight at work. I fought to stay awake during my 7 hours of work (I may have fallen asleep briefly a few times while working) and as soon as I was done with work I went to lay down on my bed to try to nap again.
I woke up almost 4 hours later! I ate some dinner when I woke up and tried to stay awake for a few more hours and then went to bed at my normal time. I was worried I might not be able to sleep because of taking such a long and late nap. I did struggle a bit falling asleep but I was asleep within maybe 30 minutes of trying to sleep. And I woke up my normal time on Wednesday morning feeling so much more refreshed.
I know they say that if you don’t sleep that you can’t catch up on sleep by sleeping in another day. But I honestly finally feel like I got the sleep that I didn’t get over the weekend. Maybe because I had such a severe sleep deficit and that it was during such a short time period that somehow I did make up the time I lost. I usually so good about going to bed and waking up at the same times every day. Even when I stay up late, I’m almost always up at the same time (which can be annoying at times). But I think these past few days really affected me more than I expected and I really just want to be back to normal.
I know that it’s not a bad thing to have lazy days every now and then. But I feel like I had just gotten over being sick and all the lazy days that I had when I was not feeling well. I also hate that I’ve been lazy because it makes for boring posts on here! I was really hoping to be able to write about the union meeting that I didn’t make it to. And I really haven’t been doing much this week because of feeling off and I don’t know what I’ll be writing about tomorrow yet. I’m sure I’ll think up something, but I really prefer it when my life is interesting so I know I have some good content for you all to read!
I know the entire country has pretty much been through a massive heat wave lately. It’s been brutal here in LA and I know that I don’t have it as badly as other people have had it. In LA, so many people were without power and when the temperature at night is still in the 90s that can be pretty miserable to sleep. I’m glad that I’ve had power this entire time (so far) and that I have a bunch of fans and my window a/c unit to keep things tolerable.
Even though my house is tiny, the window a/c doesn’t cool down my entire place. But it makes it much better. This heat wave is so much worse than what we’ve had before so it’s extremely rare to get my house below 80 degrees.
The past few days I’ve been running the a/c almost from the time I get up until I go to bed (I feel weird about running it while I’m sleeping) unless I’m not inside my house. And because the evenings are still hot I haven’t been able to open up my house at night to try to get some fresh air and cool things down more. It’s a bit claustrophobic when everything is closed up all day so I can cool down my house, but I know this is temporary.
Sleeping has been rough for me lately because of the heat. My house is still usually around 85 when I’m going to bed and my bedroom is a bit warmer than that because of how the sun goes through the windows. I’ve got a fan next to my bed and I have a cooling towel that I put on me while I try to sleep. I end up waking up once or twice a night to get some cold water to drink and to get the cooling towel wet again so I can try to stay cool. But I do toss and turn a lot at night when it’s this hot and my sleep has been suffering.
The other thing that has been affected by the heat is when I eat. I am not getting hungry until really late and that is not a good thing. I hate eating that late and I have been trying to make myself eat dinner at a more reasonable hour, but I’m just not able to do it. Usually when I should be having dinner I’m on my bed or couch with the fan pointed at me and just trying to stop sweating. This issue is also affecting my sleep because when I eat right before going to bed I get heartburn and that is never fun.
And as always, my body is super swollen in the heat. I know that most people have this issue, but it always hits me hard when none of my clothes fit me. I have a very limited wardrobe that I can wear in the heat and that I would want to wear when it’s this hot out. I’m pretty much sticking to yoga capris and tank tops. They are feeling tight on my body (and my workout clothes feel 2 sizes too small), but I know this is a temporary thing and has nothing to do with my weight loss efforts.
This is something I battle with every time we have a heat wave. But even with the extra issues with sleep and food, I think I’m dealing with the heat swelling so much better this year than I have in the past. I knew this was going to happen and I decided to not look at the scale and plan what clothes I could wear when things would feel tight. Planning for feeling this way has been helping me even if I have some moments where I’m so frustrated that things aren’t fitting or that it’s a struggle to fit into something that normally is so easy to wear.
The temperature here in LA is supposed to be getting better every day and in a week it should be normal or even a little cooler than normal. As much as I hate being super cold in my house, that is a bit better than feeling this heat sick. But feeling this way is usually very limited and I know that in a few days I should be over it and won’t have to keep complaining about it.
If you don’t live in LA, you might not know we are going through a pretty bad heat wave right now. It’s hopefully going to end soon, but it’s been miserable. I know that we have had some heat waves in October in the past, but this is much worse than normal. It has been hotter now than it was over the summer when we had heat waves. Just the other day, this was the temperature by my house (where it rarely gets to 100 degrees).
I know that I’m luckier than others. I do have a little window a/c unit that I can use. And my a/c is pretty energy-efficient so when I use it my electricity bill doesn’t double or triple like some a/c units do for my friends. But even though it isn’t expensive to run, I try to limit how often I run it because I don’t want to get dependent on it and use it more than I can afford. But it’s nice to now that I have it there so that I’m not dealing with nights where it is still over 90 degrees inside my house when I’m trying to sleep.
Over the past few days, I’ve had just fans on for the first part of the day and then when I get home from a workout or whatever I did that afternoon I have to run my a/c until I go to bed. Then I can usually get my house down to a reasonable temperature to sleep in. But it’s still not fun to be stuck in the heat, especially when it heats up my computer while I’m working too. I haven’t resorted to sitting on ice packs like I did in the past, but I’m getting pretty close to that. I also got these cooling towels over the summer to help me sleep when it was too hot inside my house at nighttime. I have been using those around my neck or on my back while working to keep things more comfortable.
I really hope that it cools down soon. I want to feel more comfortable in my house and I hate what the heat does to my body. I’ve been working hard at getting things back on track but now it’s tough to tell if it’s working or not. All of my clothes feel way too tight on me but I know that my body is swollen from heat because nothing fits including shoes (which isn’t affected by weight loss or gain for me). Fortunately, workout clothes have a lot of stretch in them so I’ve been wearing those a lot. But I want to know that my efforts to get things back to how they should be are working and the best way to tell that is how my clothes feel on me. And having everything feel too tight does mess with my head a bit.
I’m sure it’s annoying to complain about the heat. But honestly that is occupying a lot of my mind right now. There are other things that have been bugging or annoying me, and having it be ridiculously hot doesn’t make things any better. But I am trying to make the best of things right now. I’m grateful for my workouts because there is really great a/c at Orangetheory. And it does motivate me to get out of my house more to relax somewhere else. It’s nice to have something breaking up the day when I have been working from home for 7 hours. I hate staying home all day so a post-work errand or adventure is good and now it has the added bonus of hopefully being a place that is cooler than my house.
I do wonder if the heat is really that bad or my negative attitude about other things is making is worse. Either way, it’s not fun and I keep checking the weather report to see when things will be getting better. If things are accurate, today will be about 20 degrees cooler than yesterday (but it will still be warm) and it will drop another 20 degrees by next week. To have it go down 40 degrees in a week is proof on how hot it is right now!
So for now, I’m just going to keep working and doing what I’m doing since there really isn’t anything that I can do to fix this. And before I know it, I hope that I’ll be complaining about how cold it is. Although I do prefer that sometimes since I can always add more clothes to warm up.
Last week I wrote about how I got back into doing more running and how happy that had made me. I was on such a high from those workouts and really thought that I was getting back to what I was doing before and that more of my workouts would be able to be running based ones. But of course, life never goes that smoothly for me and this past week of workouts ended up being a lot of walking ones. I know that progress is not a straight line, but it’s crazy how I’m really having 2 steps forward 1 step back so often.
Monday’s workout was my best one as far as running goes. It ended up being only a 2 group workout (my Monday workouts are normally 3G ones) and it was a special Orangetheory bingo workout. That meant that we had 3 challenges that we could choose from for cardio and 3 challenges we could choose from for the floor. We didn’t have to get through all of them, but we were encouraged to see how much we could do.
The first cardio challenge I did started with .5 miles on the treadmill. That I was able to run in full and I felt pretty amazing. Then I had a 250 meter row before going back on the treadmill. My body was feeling so exhausted already and I wasn’t able to do the second .5 miles on the treadmill as a run (I did .25 miles at 8% as a walk). It was throwing me off so much that I couldn’t run. But I also know that sometimes when I do something after being on the treadmill and try to go back to the treadmill my hips don’t like it. So I just tried to accept it and move on. To finish this cardio challenge, I had a 500 meter row. I was just heading back to the treadmill when time was called to switch, so I only ended up doing one cardio challenge.
For the floor, I was much more successful. With the 3 challenges, each followed a similar pattern with the first move being 30 reps, the second move was 20 reps, and the third move was 10 reps. These moves includes squats, strap tricep work, burpees, situps, bicep curls, rows on the straps, and plank work. I actually made it through all 3 challenges and was getting ready to start on the bonus round when class finished. I wasn’t expecting to make it through all 3 challenges and I felt pretty great for doing that.
Wednesday’s workout was an endurance day. And going to the workout I was feeling pretty bad. There has been a heat and humidity wave in LA and it’s really been affecting me. But the worst of it is that I’m not sleeping as well as I normally do. And when I toss and turn at night, I can sometimes hurt my hip or make it painful in the morning. And that’s exactly how I felt when I walked into class.
The idea of this workout was to work on increasing our base pace. And I guess that worked out pretty perfectly for me because my base pace is pretty much always a walk (unless it’s a super short block and I’m trying to challenge myself a lot). My normal base pace now is 3.5mph and it can still feel a bit challenging at times for me. But this was a good opportunity to test myself and see what I could do. The treadmill time was 3 blocks and I decided to try to do the entire thing at 3.6mph. All of my push paces were at 6% incline and all my all out paces were at 8%, but I kept my speed at 3.6 the entire time. It wasn’t easy, but it was much easier than I expected it would be considering how I was feeling that day.
On the floor, the first block was squats, hamstring work, and rowing. For the rowing, we had 90 second timed rows and 30 pulls for distance. I didn’t do anything spectacular with either rowing thing, but if I’m being honest I wasn’t really trying either. And the floor ended with squats to hammer curls, hip bridges, and plank work. I was pretty exhausted after class and knew I needed to work on getting more sleep, but the weather wasn’t really letting me do that.
When I got to Friday’s workout, I was having the same hip pain I had on Wednesday and was still dealing with the effects of not sleeping well. But I was in a much better mood because that morning I found out that I won a prize during OTF Bingo! I honestly wasn’t expecting to win because I only had 3 raffle tickets, but I did put them all in the container to win a new blender (because my current blender can’t even blend frozen fruit). So to find out I won the blender totally put me in an amazing mood!
Even though I was in a good mood from finding out I was a winner, that didn’t change the fact that I was going to have to walk during this workout again. And not only was I walking, I wasn’t able to use my faster base pace that I had worked on the other day. It was a mix of endurance, strength, and power and most things were 45 seconds. For endurance it was 45 second intervals, for strength it was 90 second hills, and for power it was 45 second intervals again. I really thought about trying to run during the power block, but I knew that it was for the best for me not to do that. It’s tough to have the heat making things so painful for me, but at least it’s a temporary situation and not that I injured myself.
But because my cardio work wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be, I was pretty tough on myself on the floor. The first block was 45 second timed intervals to go along with the treadmill. We had chest presses, shoulder presses, and double crunches. I used the 20 pound weights for the first two moves, and while that was fine on the chest press it was a bit too tough for the shoulder press. I probably should have gone down to a lighter weight, but I wanted to be tough. The second block was all strap work with Ys, triceps, and lunges to Ys. And the last block was on the rower following the treadmill 45 second intervals.
Saturday’s workout was a 3G one and I’m glad it was that way because I was hurting and pretty tired. I knew I couldn’t take 30 minutes on the treadmill. I started on the treadmill where it was all incline work. Because of the inclines and because I didn’t sleep well again (I’m so ready for this heat wave to be done), I knew I’d be walking the entire time. But I tried to do as much of the work as I could at 3.6mph this time. I wasn’t able to do it the entire time, but it was much more than I thought I’d be able to and I’m really thinking I need to start using that speed as my base pace. Even if I can’t keep that up the entire time I’m on the treadmill, I should start that way and see how it goes.
Next I moved to the floor where we had 2 blocks. The first block had lunges, arm swings, and abs. And the second block had a new move that intrigued me. They are called swing lunges and you basically start with a reverse lunge and when you stand up you swing your back leg forward for a forward lunge. I knew there was no way I could do this unassisted, so I decided to see if I could use the straps for stability. I know my lunges weren’t pretty and I had to pause a lot to get balanced, but I was able to do them! I was so sure that I couldn’t and that the attempt was going to prove that. I’m glad to know that I was wrong and I figured out how to do a new workout move! Also in the second block we had tricep and plank work.
And my workout ended with rowing where I know I was extremely slow. This might have been my slowest rowing all year so far but I finished each row that I could. And in-between each row segment, we had squats to do. Unfortunately the squats made it a bit tough for me to get back on the rower, but again I just took my time and did what I was able to do.
Even though this past week was not as amazing as the week before, I still had some victories. I didn’t let not being able to run get me down as much as it has in the past. I did what I could to make my walking better by working on increasing my speed and I didn’t go easy on myself on the floor. And I didn’t feel like I was upset with myself as much as I had before because I knew that this issue wasn’t something I caused but was a result of the circumstances of the weather. I’m working on figuring out how to sleep better at night so the heat doesn’t affect my workouts this week, but I know that no matter what the heat wave will eventually end and I will get back to normal soon enough.
Posted onJune 16, 2017|Comments Off on Heat and Hormones (or Not Letting Cravings Take Over)
I’ve written about the heat from time to time on here. I don’t know why each year when it gets hot I seem surprised by it and how my body reacts. I know that my body swelling is a reaction to the heat and I understand that I shouldn’t be stressed about it. But knowing about something and feeling that way are totally different things. So of course, as soon as my body starts swelling (and my clothes stop fitting as nicely), I start to stress out.
And knowing that I’ve gained a little weight lately doesn’t help me stay rational about this. I’m working on getting my weight loss back on track, but it’s not easy to do. There are so many things that feel like they are working against me and sometimes I forget that it’s not always all my fault. There are things beyond my control at times and I have to try to manage them the best that I can.
I do have air conditioning now, but I do limit how often I use it. It’s not too expensive to run, but I also don’t want to feel dependent on it. I use it when it gets really hot and stuffy inside my house and once it feels cool and comfortable again I’ll either turn it off or adjust the temperature setting. But I really don’t need to limit it as much as I do and I have to tell myself that it’s ok if I get a bit spoiled with the air conditioning. I’m hoping that I will never feel like I always need it on and end up spending a ton of money on electricity (which is unlikely to happen with my current energy-efficient a/c), but there is a lot of middle ground between how little I’m using it now and using it all the time.
The other thing that I’m dealing with (and is probably being made worse with the heat) are the food cravings I’ve been having lately. I’m still adjusting to having hormone fluctuations and haven’t had to deal with cravings this way since I was in high school. Since I was on continuous birth control pills, I didn’t get a period and didn’t have PMS. The cravings are so weird to me and I’m working on trying to distinguish the difference between cravings because of hormones and cravings because of my eating disorder. I need to treat each type of craving differently and it’s not easy to know what to do.
I’m working on finding good and healthy options for when I do have hormonal cravings. It’s not easy when you want something that you know isn’t good for you, but hopefully I can figure out what will satisfy my body when I feel like I need something. This is all new to me, but hopefully once I’ve been birth control pill free for a year it will normalize. It’s only been 6 months and I know a lot of people told me it could take a year or two for things to be stable. While some things stabilized right away, I have to keep reminding myself that other things might not have normalized as quickly and I have to allow myself for an adjustment period.
I hate that I feel like I have these issues every single time that it gets hot and I wonder when it will stop feeling so crazy. I’m letting myself have these feelings because I know that things aren’t always in my control and I shouldn’t try to avoid feeling however I’m feeling. But it does annoy me that it feels like the heat and the cravings have ganged up on me right now and are making my life extra difficult.
But as all the other struggles I’ve written about on here, I know this is temporary. I have things in place to help me out this time. I’m in a better mental space to deal with the issues and I know what I can do to work on them. It’s not easy and I have to accept that it might never become easy. It’s all about getting through the tough times so that the next time they happen you are better prepared. I haven’t had to deal with the heat and hormone fluctuations together yet, so this time it might be a bit tougher. But that just means that next year should be better and that is what is helping me deal this time.
I’ve been complaining about the heat in my house since my very first summer here. Because my house is so old, the insulation is pretty bad. So when it gets hot in LA, the heat gets trapped inside even if it cools down outside in the evening. There have been plenty of nights where it’s over 90 degrees inside my bedroom when I was going to bed.
I have never really lived in a place with a/c (my last apartment had it but it was facing a wall in the kitchen so it was useless). And I wanted to get some sort of a/c for my house. But there were issues from the beginning. Until recently, my house had fuses and there wasn’t enough power to run an a/c. Then when I got circuits, I was told that I would have to still watch how much power I used because there is still very little power in my place.
Next was the issue of trying to find a portable a/c unit that wasn’t a swamp cooler (because it does get too humid in LA to use one) and didn’t use a ton of power. Once I found that, then it was the issue of finding one that wasn’t insanely expensive. I never found anything that seemed right to me so I never got a portable a/c unit.
I was talking to my landlord last month and we were making small talk about the heat. I mentioned the lack of a/c and he said that because of my house set up I was pretty limited in my options. I said how I really wanted to put a window unit in my dining room, and he said that it couldn’t block the communal driveway (my dining room looks onto the driveway and there is about a foot of room between my wall and the driveway path). With that new restriction, I started to do some research again.
I actually found a low profile window a/c that doesn’t stick out that far and is energy-efficient so it doesn’t go over the power limit I have in my house! And since I hadn’t asked for anything for my birthday from my parents, they agreed to buy it for me!
Once I knew it was on its way, I had to figure out how I’d install it. Fortunately, the directions were available online so my dad and I both researched them. And when I was at brunch with my friend Jane a week ago, I mentioned the new a/c unit and she said that she had installed one before! So she agreed to help me out when it was here!
This past Sunday was installation day. Prior to that, I had made a trip to Home Depot because my dad discovered some fine print in the directions that would require me to drill a piece of wood onto my window sill. And my dad and I had multiple FaceTime calls so he could look at what I was doing.
It was actually pretty funny when we were on FaceTime trying to figure this all out.
On Sunday, there were dozens of phone calls/FaceTime calls to my dad while Jane and I were working and then we also had to make another Home Depot run. But after a couple of attempts (and thanks to my power drill and saw that my dad got me years ago), we were able to install it!
I’m sure this sounds silly, but even in the couple of days that I’ve had it this a/c unit has made a huge difference in my life! I got it installed just in time for another heat wave in LA and I’m finally getting to work in my house in reasonable temperatures.
I’m still super nervous about how much more expensive my power bill will be, but there was a little guide on the a/c unit that said if you ran the until 8 hours a day for 3 months it would only cost an extra $48 a year. Hopefully that’s true.
I’m so glad that my parents were generous enough to get me this a/c unit. I’m so happy that I was able to install it and that Jane was willing to help me (and we did this in the heat since the a/c wasn’t in yet!). And I’m so excited that I will not feel as sick inside my house during a heat wave and feel trapped since I have to work in my house.
Hopefully when I eventually move one day this a/c unit is as easy to uninstall as it was to install. This thing is totally coming with me wherever I go!
I feel like a broken record. I’m having issueswith the heat again.
If you don’t live in LA, trust me, this heat wave is ridiculous.
In the valley, it’s much worse. But everyone who I know who lives in the valley has air conditioning. At my house, on the westside, it’s still pretty hot and I still don’t have air conditioning.
What’s making things worse is that it’s not cooling down at night. I’m typing this at 8:35 Tuesday evening and it’s still 87 degrees out. So it’s really tough for my house to get a bit cooler at night.
I’m trying to deal with it the best that I can. I have my fan and I’ve been moving it around to whatever room I’m in. And I’m sleeping with ice packs in my bed. I actually have 4 ice packs but I sleep with 2 at a time. Then when I wake up in the middle of the night and those ice packs are melted and warm, I swap them out for the ice packs that have been in the freezer. That’s really helping.
And I’m not trying to fit into any of my tighter clothes. I know that my body is swollen with the heat. My workout pants are feeling tight. So I’m not even going to try to put jeans on.
There are some positives with all this. First of all, there should be a break in the heat wave toward the end of this week. It will help so much to have it be 10-20 degrees cooler at night!
And, I’m finally looking into portable air conditioners! My landlord approved me getting one (just not a window unit) so I can get something to help for next summer. I won’t be ordering it until this heat wave is over because none of them are on sale yet and many stores are sold out. But this should be the last summer that it’s so miserable that I can’t really sleep.
But until then, I’m just sweating it out in my house and when I’m done working I head to my car to enjoy the super powerful air conditioning that my car has!
Dealing With Heat And Humidity (or I’m Very Lucky The Pandemic Didn’t Happen A Few Years Ago)
